THE HOUSE THAT JOHNNY BUILT Every morning about the same time Johnny Desmond came out to the door of his shop for a good look up and down the street. He was like an old cat stretching himself after a nap. He had the old cap down over his left eye and his two hands in his trousers pockets, and first he inspected the sky, and then he inspected the Square end of Main Street, and after that the Abbey end, and then there were a lot of small personal stares at other shops and:at people that passed. Johnny owned the best general store in the town, a man that came in from the country with nothing, without a boot to his foot, as you might say. He had a red face, an apoplectic face, that looked like a plum pudding you’d squeezed up and down till it all bulged sideways, so that the features were all flattened and spread out and the two eyes narrowed into slits. As if that wasn’t enough, he looked at you from under the peak of his cap exactly as if you were the headlights of a motor car, with his right eye cocked and his left screwed up till his whole face was as wrinkled as a roasted apple. Now one morning as Johnny looked down towards the Abbey, what should he see but a handsome woman in a white coat coming up towards him, with her two hands in her coat pockets and her head down. She was a woman he’d never before laid eyes on to his knowledge, and he stared at her and saluted her, and then stood looking after her with his left eye closed as if he was still a bit blinded by her headlights. “Tom!” he called without looking round. “Yes, Mr.D.,” said his assistant from inside the counter. “Who’s that, Tom?” asked Johnny. “That’s the new doctor,” said Tom. “Doctor?” said Johnny, swinging his head right round. “Doctor O’Brien in the Dispensary.” “Which O’Briens are they, Tom?” asked Johnny in a baffled tone. “Mickey the Miser’s,” said Tom. “Mickey of Asragh?” exclaimed Johnny as if he couldn’t believe it. Every morning after that he waited for her, and even strolled up the street along with her, rolling along beside her like a whiskey keg on props and jingling the coin in his trousers pockets. “Tom!” he called when he got back. “Yes, Mr. D.” says Tom. “There’s style for you, Tom!” grunted Johnny. “She can damn well afford it,” said Tom. “There’s breeding for you!” said Johnny. “She’s a bitch for her beer,” said Tom. But beer or no beer—and Johnny wasn’t a heavy drinker himself—he was impressed. He ordered a new brown suit and a new soft hat, and on top of that he put on a new gold watch-chain and went off to the doctor’s digs one night. They showed him into the parlour. Parlours always fascinated Johnny. Leave alone the furniture, which is a book in itself, a roomful of photos will set up a man of an enquiring turn of mind for life. She came in, looking a bit bosomy in a yellow blouse, and he saw to his amusement that at the very first glance she took in the gold chain. She was a shy sort of girl and the most you got from her as a rule was a hasty glance, but that same would blister you. He liked that in her. He liked a girl not to be a fool. “I suppose you’re surprised to see me?” said Johnny. “Arrah, I’m delighted,” she said in a high sing-song, the way they speak in Asragh. “I hope there’s nothing the matter?” “Well, now,” said Johnny, who was by way of being a bit of a joker, “you put your finger on it. ’Tis the old heart.” “Ah, is it codding me you are?” she asked with a shocked look and her head lowered. “Oh, the devil a cod!” said Johnny, delighted with the reception he was getting. “And there’s no one else I’d trust.” “’Tis probably indigestion,” said she. “Are you sleeping all right?” “Poorly,” said Johnny. “Is it palpitations you have?” “Thumps,” said Johnny, indicating the way his heart went pit-a-pat. “Ah, go to God!” said she, drawing down the blind half-way and giving a look down the street. “Open that old shirt of yours and give us a look at you.” “Ah, I’d be too shy,” said Johnny, drawing back. “Shy my nanny,” said she. “What old nonsense you have! Will you open it before I drag it off you?” “And besides,” said Johnny confidentially, “what’s wrong with my heart wouldn’t show through the speaking-tube. Sit down there till I be talking to you.” “Wisha, bad cess to you and your old jokes!” she cried: “Will you have a drop of whiskey—though God knows you don’t deserve it.” | “Whiskey ?” chuckled Johnny. “What’s that ? Give us a drop till I see what ’tis like.” “That’s a new cigarette-case you have,” she said as he passed her the fags. “Is it silver?” “It is,” said Johnny. “Arrah, Johnny,” said she, screwing up her eyes as she struck a light, “you must be rolling in dibs?” “I am,” said Johnny. So he took his glass and put one thumb in the armhole of his waistcoat and waited till she sat down on the sofa, with her goldy-brown hair coming loose, and the finest pair of legs in the county tucked away under her. Then he leaned back in his chair and gave his mouth a wiggle to limber it up. “I’m fifty,” he said to the fire-screen. “Fifty or near it,” he added to herself. “I’m a well-to-do man. I never had a day’s illness, barring one rupture I got about twelve year ago. ’Twas the way I was lugging an old packing-case from the shop to the van.” “Was it an operation you had?” asked the doctor. “Twas,” said Johnny. “Was it Caulfield did it?” “That fellow!” said Johnny contemptuously. “I wouldn’t leave him sew on a button for me. I had Surgeon Hawthorne. Forty-two pounds he charged me.” “Forty-two?” said she. “Ah, he saw you coming!” “And sixteen for the nursing home,” Johnny said bitterly. “I wish I could make my money as easy. But anyway, between the jigs and the reels I never thought much about marriage, and besides, the women in this town wouldn’t suit me at all.” He let his chair fall back into position and bent across the table towards her with his hands clasped before him. “The sort of man I am, I like a woman with a bit of style, and the women in this town that have any nature have no style, and the ones that have style have no nature. I declare to my God,” he burst out indignantly, waving his hand in the air, “whatever the blazes they do to them in convent schools you couldn’t get a laugh out of them. They’re killed with grandeur. But you’re different. You have the nature and you have the style.” “Arrah, hold on, Johnny,” said the doctor, sitting up. “What ails you? "Tisn’t asking me to marry you you are he “If ’tisn’t that same, ’tis no less,” said Johnny stubbornly. “Why then indeed I’ll do nothing of the sort,” said the doctor, with the Asragh lilt in her voice like a divebomber swooping and soaring; as pretty a tune as ever you’d hear in the mouth of a good-looking girl, unless she actually happened to be pitching you to blazes. “Sure, God Almighty, Johnny, aren’t you old enough to be my father?” “If I’m older I’m steadier,” said Johnny, not liking at all the turn the talk was taking. “Ay,” said she, “and so is the Rock of Cashel, but I never had much of a smack for history.” “What you should do,” said Johnny cunningly, “is talk to your father about it. See what advice will he give you. He’s the smartest business man in this part of the world, and mind you, the man that says it is no fool.” “Ah, Johnny,” said she, “will you have a bit of sense? Sure, that sort of haggling between fathers is over and done with these fifty years. You wouldn’t get a girl in the whole county that would let her father put a halter round her neck like that.” “Is that so?” said Johnny, a bit taken aback. “Ah, sure, of course it is. God Almighty, Johnny,” said she with the same dive-bomber swoop in her voice, “isn’t it the one little bit of pleasure we have in life?” “I see, I see,” said Johnny, meaning that he didn’t see at all, and he stood up and dug his hands in his trousers pockets and spun round on one leg, looking at the pattern on the carpet. “Of course,” he went on, with a tormented air, “it might be you were misled about what I’m worth. I’m worth a lot of money. Even your friend the bank manager doesn’t know what I’m worth. No, nor half what I’m worth.” “Ah,” she said furiously, jumping up and giving him a glare, “Con Doody never mentioned your name to me. Sure, I wouldn’t give a snap of my fingers for all your old money!” “And you won’t talk to your father?” asked Johnny morosely. “Ah, what a thing I’d do!” said the doctor. “There’s no harm done,” said Johnny very stiffly. “You’ll excuse my asking,” and away he went in a huff. Next morning when she passed on her way to the dispensary there was no sign of him at the door of the shop, and the doctor, who by that time was beginning to be sorry for the way she took him, got into such a flaming wax that she told them all about it at the bridge party that evening. “And I declare to God,” she said innocently by way of conclusion, “he went out the door on me as if I was a bad neighbour that wouldn’t give him the loan of my flat-iron.” 2. But there was one thing you couldn’t help admiring about Johnny and that was his obstinacy. He was the sort of man that could do without something all the days of his life, so long as it didn’t occur to him, but from the moment it did, it gave him no peace. A month passed; two months passed, and Johnny never stopped thinking of it, and then one day away with him to young O’Connor, the County Council architect. “Tell me,” said Johnny, leaning his two pudgy arms on the table, with his left eye screwed up and his lower lip thrust out, “the couple of houses I have there at the corner of the Skehanagh Road—what sort of a place could you make of them?” “Begor, I don’t know, Johnny,” O’Connor said blandly, “unless you were thinking of giving them tothe National Museum.” © “I’m thinking of knocking them down,” said Johnny. “Oh, I see,” said O’Connor, sitting back and folding his hands. “You could do a nice little job there all right if you had the tenants.” “Never mind about the tenants,” said Johnny. “What I’m thinking of is a shop.” “What sort of a shop?” O’Connor asked with new interest. “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” said Johnny with a grim chuckle. “I want a new shop and a new house.” “And I suppose I’m to find out what sort of house as well?” O’Connor asked innocently. “How many rooms would there be in that house of the Bank Manager’s?” asked Johnny. “Doody’s?” said O’Connor. “But that’s a big place, man.” “You couldn’t swing a cat in that old place I have now,” said Johnny. “I see,” said O’Connor drily. “You’re going in for keeping cats?” But it wasn’t cats Johnny was going in for at all, but chemistry. A chemist’s shop; the last thing in the world you’d think for a man that never in his life sold more than a cake of soap or a bottle of castor oil. The house was a grand affair. O’Connor got a free hand with everything; he chose the furniture, and he could have chosen the pictures as well, only by way of a joke he suggested a lot of Old Masters as being very suitable for a bachelor. And at that point Johnny said explosively that he was in no hurry; the pictures could wait. He had the car to the station the evening the new chemist arrived. She was a very pretty girl, just out of training, very tall and sylph-like with enormous dark eyes and a pretty, pleasing, ladylike air. Johnny had driven himself and the maid nearly mad seeing that everything in the house was just right for her: flowers on her dressing-table, the towels fresh, the water piping hot. When he was that way he was like a hen with an egg; poking round the kitchen and picking things up and asking what they were for. While the girl was upstairs he was walking from one room to another and stopping in the hall with his head cocked to hear what was the chemist doing now. He was in the hall when she came down, looking radiant. Small wonder, after all the stories she had heard about the awful lives of chemists in small towns in Ireland. “Was everything all right?” growled Johnny. “Oh, grand, Mr. Desmond, thanks,” she said cheerfully. She had the pleasantest manner of any girl Johnny had ever met. “Be sure and ask if there’s anything you want,” hey said. “The girl is new. She might forget. You’ll have — a drop of sherry?” . “I’d love it, Mr. Desmond,” she said, and he took her into the sitting-room. O’Connor had furnished it beautifully. She spread out her hands before the fire while he filled her out the sherry. “Here’s health!” he said. “Good health!” she said. “My goodness, if daddy only saw me now!” “How’s that?” said Johnny. “Oh, daddy is awful!” she said. “He’s a terribly severe man. He’s a clerk in the railway. He never lets us do anything. We’re not even let read a book except holy books, and we have to be in every night at ten.” “By Gor!” said Johnny, chuckling, “I see I’ll have to keep you in order.” But he didn’t hear more than half of what she said. His mind was on the supper, wondering what would go wrong with it. At the table he gave her more wine; red wine this time, and the more she drar the more ladylike she became. “Is Mrs. Desmond not well?” she asked sweetly, leaning across the table with her pretty head on one side. “Who’s that?” asked Johnny with a start. He was just thanking God sincerely that the meat bit of it was nearly over, and a mistake wouldn’t matter so much with the sweet. “Mrs. Desmond,” she repeated. “Your wife, I mean.” “Aha,” chuckled Johnny, feeling the red wine warming him up at last, “’tis only the job in the shop that’s filled. The other one is still vacant.” “You mean you’re not married at all?” she cried. “I’m as free as the birds of the air, girl,” said Johnny. He didn’t notice the silence that came on her. He was too well pleased with himself. The supper had gone off splendidly, and when they went back to the sitting-room for their coffee Johnny was just beginning to get into his stride. He strode up and down the room, holding a fag in the hollow of his hand, and telling her about the shop he made his money in and the other chemist’s shop in the town (run by a poor strolling devil of a chemist that gave credit to all the wrong people and didn’t know where to turn for money). Johnny had it all taped. A . man might be the best chemist in the world and still he might be a bad business man. “There’s three doctors,” he said. “Woolley and Hyde and a woman doctor called O’Brien. She’s in the Dispensary. Her father is a rich man. I dare say ‘twas he got her into it.” Mr. Desmond,” piped the new chemist, standing up, “you wouldn’t mind if I ran down to the chapel to say a prayer?” “The chapel?” cried Johnny in astonishment, for his brain didn’t move too quickly. : “I won’t be a minute,” she said eagerly. “But ’tis raining cats and dogs, girl,” said Johnny crossly, going to the window. “You’ll be drenched.” “Oh, I love the rain,” she said. “Honest, I do.” “Wait a minute,” he growled. “I’ll run you down myself in the car.” “Oh, no, no,” she cried nervously. “Honest, you mustn’t. I’d sooner go alone.” “Oh, very well, just as you like,” grumbled Johnny, flustered and hot and upset. Everything had seemed to be splendid, and then all at once, and for no reason i the world that he could see, it had gone wrong. He stood in the hall as she went out into the rain and then peeret after her down the street and shouted “Don’t be long!” His plum-pudding face was all screwed up in mystifica tion. Nine o’clock! What sense was there in that? He took up a paper and laid it down every time he heard a woman’s step. The chapel was only a couple of hundred yards away at the other end of the Main Street. At ten he got up and began to prowl about the room with his hands in his trousers pockets. The devil was in it if she didn’t come home now, for the chapel shut at ten. The sweat began to break out on him, and he cursed himself and cursed his luck. The Town Hall clock struck eleven; he heard the maid go up to bed and gave himself up to despair. Eleven o’clock meant scandal in the town. Nothing but misfortune ever came of women. What bad luck was on him the day he ever saw a strange woman in the town? It was the doctor was behind all his misfortunes. Then he heard the sound of a car and his heart gave a great leap. All the bad language he was nursing to himself for the past couple of hours rose up in him, and after one savage glance at the clock he ran to the front door, determined to give the chemist a good lick of his tongue if she was out with a man to this hour. The car was drawn up at the kerb, the engine stopped and the side lights on. What blackguarding was she up to now? “Is that you?” he snarled, leaning out into the spitting rain. “Why?” said a woman’s voice. “Were you waiting up for me?” and the door of the car opened and Dr. O’Brien skeltered across the pavement for shelter. “Is there something up with the chemist?” he asked in terror. “with who?” said the doctor, screwing up her face in the bright lamplight and pulling off her motoring gloves. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Aren’t you going to ask us have we a mouth on us?” “There’s whiskey on the sideboard,” snapped Johnny distractedly. “Take it and leave me alone. I’m demented! Demented! I thought you were the new chemist.” “Wisha, Johnny, is this the sort of hours she’s keeping?” asked the doctor in great concern as she filled her glass. . “She went down to the chapel to say a prayer,” Johnny ground out through the side of his mouth. “Three hours ago,” he ended in a thunder-clap. “Three hours ago?” she echoed, leaning her elbow on the sideboard, and looking a million times prettier than Johnny had ever seen her look in her tight-fitting coat and skirt with the little wisps of goldy-brown hair coming loose from under the cocky hat. “She must have a lot of prayers said by now. Arrah, Johnny, I wouldn’t like an ould one like that around the place at all! Sure, she’d have you persecuted with piety.” “Fell to your sowl, woman!” roared Johnny, stopping dead in his bear-like shamble about the room, “sure, the chapel is shut since ten!” J “And this her first night here and all!” exclaimed the doctor with her mouth agape. “Ah, do you know, Yd say she must have drink taken! Did you try the Guards’ barrack, Johnny?” ‘ “Drink?” said Johnny. “She had no drink. She had nothing, only a couple of glasses of wine to her supper.” “And had she wine to her supper?” the doctor asked innocently. “Go on, can’t you! ’Tis as good as a storybook. And what happened them?” “Then she said she wanted to go to the chapel,” said Johnny, knowing well how queer it sounded. “And she with wine and everything to her hand!” cried the doctor. “Arrah, Johnny, you must take me for a great gom entirely! You’re not telling me the whole story at all. Go on now and tell me what did you do to the girl to drive her out on a night like this?” “Me?” Johnny said indignantly. “I done nothing at all to her.” “Are you sure you didn’t give her an old squeeze or anything?” “Did I what?” Johnny boomed in bellowing fury. “Ah, go out of my sight, you mocking jade you! I have no time for bad-minded females like you.” “Bad-minded?” said the doctor. “And the two of ye here with sofas and cushions and whiskey and wine and the devil knows what. How do I know what you’d do if you had a few drinks in you? Maybe you’d be just as lively as the rest of them. Is she living here with you, Johnny ?” she asked with interest. “Where else would she live?” growled Johnny. “And ye not married or anything?” the doctor said reproachfully. “Maybe twas the way ’twas on her conscience and she went down to confession.” “What in God’s name do you mean, woman?” Johnny asked, brought to a full halt, like a wild horse the trainer has played out. “Wisha, Johnny, are you ever going to get a bit of sense?” she continued pityingly. “At your age oughtn’t you know damn well that in a town like this you couldn’t bring a girl of eighteen in to live with you?” “But God above,” Johnny said in an anguished whisper, his face growing white, his hands clasped in supplication, “I meant no harm to the girl.” “And how do you expect her to know?” said the doctor. “She’s up in the digs now, if you want to know, doing hysterics on the old landlady. At least, she was when I left. She’s probably doped or dead by now, because I gave her enough to quieten a dance-hall. Give us her things and let us go home to our bed. God knows, Johnny, you ought to have more sense.” As she was driving away with the chemist’s bags in the back of the car she suddenly put her head through the side window. “Johnny!” she called. “What is it now?” Johnny asked irritably, pulling up the collar of his coat and running across the pavement to her. “Tell us, Johnny,” she said innocently, “why haven’t you pictures on the walls?” “Ask my arse!” hissed Johnny malevolently, and strode back to the hall. “Johnny!” she called. “Johnny, aren’t you going to kiss and be friends?” “Kiss my arse!” shouted Johnny as he banged the door. Next day about lunch-time he called down to the new shop. He had deliberately left it alone till then. The chemist was leaning over the counter to serve a customer with that pretty, deferential, nun-like air of hers, and when she saw him come in she smiled sweetly. A ravishing smile! It filled Johnny’s heart with bitterness to the brim. The divil a hair astray on her, and the night she was after giving him! He waited till the customer left and then called her into the parlour next door. She followed him obediently with her head in the air and the same smile on her lips. “You’re comfortable where you are?” he asked gruffly. “Oh, very comfortable, Mr. Desmond, thanks,” she replied eagerly. “’Twas a mistake about last night,” he said awkwardly, lifting his cap and scratching his close-cut skull. “’Twas my fault. I blame myself a lot for it. It should have occurred to me. But I’ll make it up on the wages.’ “Oh, that’s quite all right,” she said. “You see, it isn’t myself at all. It’s daddy. He’d kill me if he ever found out.” “I wouldn’t wish for one thousand pounds,” Johnny said slowly in a choking voice, “that you’d think I intended anything wrong. If you saw Father Ring last night instead of—instead of the one you did see” (the doctor’s name choked him for a moment), “he’d tell you the same. If I did make a mistake ’twas because the likes of it would never occur to me. I never in all my life was mixed up in work like that.” “Mr. Desmond,” she said with real distress, “I’m very sorry. I see now how silly I was. The doctor told me.” “There’s a certain thing I was going to say to you,” said Johnny. He pulled a chair closer to him, rested his foot on the chair, his elbow on his knee, and then clasped his hands together as he looked at her. “I wasn’t going to say it now or for a long time to come, till you’d have time to look round you and see what sort of man I was and what sort of a home had I. I’m afraid of no enquiry. I’m hiding nothing on you. That’s the sort of man I am. But after the people you saw,” he went on, growing _purple at the very thought of the doctor, “and the things they may have said to you, I must say it now. I have no choice. There’s the house,” he said with a wave of his hand. “You see what it’s like.” “Oh, it’s a beautiful house, Mr. Desmond,” she said enthusiastically, standing on tiptoe. “You might notice,” he said, “I left out the pictures. That’s a thing I’d sooner leave to yourself.” : “Excuse me,” she asked in bewilderment, “did you want me to choose the pictures for you?” “I want you to choose myself, girl,” Johnny said passionately, kicking the chair to the other side of the room. “That was why I chose you from all the other girls in Dublin. I was sure you were the only one of them that would suit me.” “Oh, but I couldn’t do that, Mr. Desmond,” she cried in alarm, stepping back from him. “Why couldn’t you?” he asked. “Oh, daddy would never allow it. He says I mustn’t marry till I’m thirty.” “I’ll talk to your father,” said Johnny. “Oh, no, please don’t,” she said, nearly in tears. “I know he wouldn’t allow me, and anyway, Mr. Desmond, I don’t want to get married. I don’t really. 1 want to go into a convent or something, but I don’t want to get married.” “Don’t say no now till you have time to look round you,” Johnny said shrewdly. “I’d make you a good husband. My money is made, and when I die, if twas God’s Holy Will I’d die before you, I’d leave you the richest woman in these parts. And I wouldn’t spancel you,” he said passionately. “When I’m dead whatever is mine is yours to do what you like with. If you wanted to marry again I wouldn’t tie you.” “Oh, please, please!” she said, sniffing, “I don’t want to get married at all. I’m too young, and besides I have a boy in Dublin, and he says he’ll marry me when he gets a job.” “Think over it,” said Johnny despairingly, “you might change.” “Yes, Mr. Desmond,” she said obediently, just as if he’d told her to change the lunch hour, and he knew she wouldn’t while she went out backwards, as if she was afraid he might spring on her. He knew now there was a curse on him; that his luck was broken, and his beautiful house and furniture was all for nothing. He died less than a year later and the story goes in town that the chagrin of it went to his heart. The Foxy Desmonds of the Glen blew his fortune on fur coats and motor cars. Only the doctor believes it was all on her account, and that what he really died of was a broken heart. Women are great on broken hearts.